


Somehow, Sometimes

by outsquatchin94



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Grief, S11 E8: Familiar, Season 11, Season 11 Spoilers, long talks, loss of a child, tiny towns with tiny hotels and forests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 20:37:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13934937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outsquatchin94/pseuds/outsquatchin94
Summary: Now, as she sits on yet another hotel bed, in yet another tiny town, with yet another forest in which awful things keep happening, she is unable to draw enough breath. She’s in a robe, part-way through getting ready for bed, but the particular pink shade of her sleep shirt was too reminiscent of that little girl’s bow on the forest floor today.





	Somehow, Sometimes

Scully really tries very hard not to think about it. And she mostly does quite a good job. It’s only sometimes that it hits her, and she has to sit for a moment, suddenly unable to breathe in the oppressive quiet. It happens whenever she gets asked if she’s a parent and she finds herself unable to really say (or, even worse, when she gets told that she must not understand since she has no children of her own). How do you explain that your children are dead or running around the country (with questionable morals?). How do you explain that your first child was a medical experiment (and there were probably others you never knew), and that you met her, fought for her, and grieved her all within a very short span of time? How do you explain that your most-longed for thing, your miracle child, was given up in a haze of anxiety and grief and fear? Sometimes it hits her when the flowers come on Mother’s Day—there’s never a name, but she knows who they’re from. The bunch always has daisies, sometimes primroses, and it’s addressed to Dana, a small concession to the private life she will never have.

 

Now, as she sits on yet another hotel bed, in yet another tiny town, with yet another forest in which awful things keep happening, she is unable to draw enough breath. She’s in a robe, part-way through getting ready for bed, but the particular pink shade of her sleep shirt was too reminiscent of that little girl’s bow on the forest floor today. She is so focused on tracing the quasi-Navajo pattern on the hotel bedspread that she almost misses the quiet knock on the door. Tonight the familiar emptiness is just a little sharper than usual, the edges of that wound just a little more jagged. Losing children and standing over their bodies will never be easy, but today it hit just too close to home. Sometimes she wishes names would go out of style, that she would never have to hear another “Emily!” across the aisle of the grocery store or a "William!" called across a parking lot. She mostly manages not to look around, but sometimes, when she's very tired, she can't quite stop herself. 

 

The person outside taps again, and she is pulled from her wandering thoughts. She shakes her head and stands. When she opens the door, it’s Mulder (of course it is). He looks unusually world-weary today, wearing a (rather inexplicable) plaid jacket, and she doesn’t have the heart to rib him as she might otherwise. She simply steps back, and he moves past her into the small half-circle of light cast by the bedside lamp. He sits on the unrumpled bed across from the one she’s been using (why do they so often get rooms with two beds? She has found herself questioning more things lately about their seemingly never-ending work). She sits across from him and looks, really looks, at him for the first time in days (possibly since they arrived in the town). He seems older tonight, carrying a weight somehow heavier than the angst-ridden and impossible burden of finding his sister, heavier than the losses of his parents and the fiction of his family. He glances away and stares at the bedspread beside his right thigh. 

 

“It’s not your old blanket Mulder, but it’s not too shabby,” Scully tries to draw him back to the small hotel room, away from the expanses of his own mind, mostly because she can’t stand the silence. It’s a lame attempt, but at least he looks up at her. 

 

“The mother, Emily’s mother, she asked me—” he breaks off, and now it’s her turn to look down and away. “She asked me if I was a parent… I didn’t know what to say.” 

 

Scully just looks up at him, feeling the weight of all their years together filling the space, all the way into the corners of the room. Somehow, it’s not quite as heavy as it used to be; tonight that weight has a comforting quality, tender where it used to be too much. 

 

“Oh, Mulder.” Scully’s voice doesn’t carry the admonishment it had earlier in the day when she dismissed his theories of witchcraft. This time it’s said softly, and she reaches out like she might take his hand, but thinks better of it and moves up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. 

 

“I said I had a son, but that he was grown,” Mulder laughs softly at the end, but it sounds a little more like a sob. Scully does reach out to take his hand this time, and he grips her fingers tightly in his own (maybe she still is a lifeline, even after all this time and all their missteps). “I didn’t know what to say, what I’m allowed to say, but I just couldn’t—couldn’t pretend he doesn’t exist, you know?” 

 

Mulder moves his free hand quickly over his eyes, dashing away any tears that have fallen. Scully just tugs his other arm gently, pulling him across to her bed, where he sits heavily, still slumped over. She runs her hand down his back, once and then over and over again, trying to find words. 

 

“Mulder…” she trails off, acutely aware that she cannot minimize his grief in this. That although her pain was and is great, he has lost so much as well. “Mulder, I know.” 

 

That seems to be enough. Or at least it gets him to look back up at her, and the creases around his eyes and the gray in his hair seem more noticeable. They’ve been close recently (very close), but something about tonight seems to have aged them both. She’s finding it difficult to speak above a whisper. He glances at her again, from her hair (which she knows she’ll have to let fade at some point), to her eyes, and then down to the cross at her throat. 

 

He gently touches it and this time, the tears in his eyes are unmistakeable and begin to slide down his cheeks. He shakes his head, mumbling something, and she’s leaning in, trying to hear, only to begin weeping herself when she realizes he’s repeating “I’m sorry, so so sorry.” 

 

“Oh, Mulder,” and this time it’s very soft. She folds her arms around him, trying to put all of her belief and trust and love for this man into her embrace. Although she can’t find the words to take away what she assumes is his guilt, she can do what she knows how to do, what she’s done many times before. So she holds him, scooting back to the head of the bed and bringing him along, until they’re half-lying, half-propped up, still wrapped up in one another. She can feel a wet patch on her shoulder, and she knows her tears are falling on his hair. His arms are tight around her waist, and his shoulders are shaking slightly with the effort of calming himself down. Finally he takes a deep breath and looks up at her. 

 

“I never forget about her either, Scully,” he is painfully sincere, and he sits up, looking at her like he really needs to make sure she understands. He touches her necklace again. “I know she wasn’t mine, not at all, but she was important, and I think of her whenever there’s a little girl, you know—” 

 

Instead of pulling away as he thinks she might (it’s happened before), Scully reaches out to touch his face, wiping away some of the tears on his cheek. For a fleeting moment, Mulder has the bizarre thought that Scully’s hair is now almost the same length that Emily’s was, all those Christmases ago. Now Scully’s just smiling, a little sadly, and she moves her hand down to straighten the neckline of his t-shirt beneath his jacket. 

 

“I know, Mulder.” This time she’s the one slouching down slightly, to fit herself in the curve of his shoulder. It’s exactly as comforting as it’s always been, as she turns herself to press up against him (cheek into the line of his collar bone, nose pressed to his neck) and his arm comes around her just like it always has, she takes a deep, trembling breath and feels the weight in the room lift just slightly. 

 

“I never forget either, Mulder, and I know you don’t.” This is as close as she can come to breaking their unspoken agreement not to mention the flowers or the intimacy they represent, but here, in this little hotel room, Mulder falls asleep seeing the gentle glint of light on the golden cross and feeling the soothing rise and fall of Scully’s diaphragm under his arm.

**Author's Note:**

> AN: This came to me when I realized how awful it was that the girl in the episode was named Emily (WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS CREATORS--but also I feel like so many things in this episode were allusions to other things that have happened). The hotel room trope is not super original, but I felt the need to write this. Hopefully it speaks to a few other people like it did to me. 
> 
> Sorry about any typos or displeasing grammatical choices--it's late and I wanted to post it more than I wanted to read through it multiple times over.


End file.
